Teenage Pregnancy

Nearly every television season, a storybook stork delivers a plot twist in the form of a baby to a teen drama. "The Secret Life of the American Teenager," created by Brenda Hampton of "7th Heaven," premiered last summer on ABC Family and introduced us to 15-year-old Amy Juergens, a scrawny, French horn-playing freshman at Grant High School who discovers she's pregnant -- though she's not even sure she actually had sex -- after a rendezvous with bad boy Ricky Underwood at band camp.

At least once a day, a teenage girl walks into North High School's health clinic, wanting to find out whether she's pregnant. Frequently, it turns out she is. The city's teen birth rate is more than double the statewide rate of 24.3 births per 1,000 girls age 15 to 17, and Denver school officials are considering a proposal to dispense contraceptives in its six high-school-based health clinics, which serve the district's most impoverished students.

After 14 years of steady decline, the rate of teen births rose 3% last year, according to a federal study released Wednesday. Health officials were uncertain why the number was increasing and whether it represented the beginning of a trend. But Mary-Jane Wagle, president of Planned Parenthood Los Angeles, said she believed the increase was due to the failure of abstinence-only education programs, which can make teens less aware of contraceptive options.

This much, at least, is certain: Jamie Lynn Spears, the 16-year-old star of the Nickelodeon series "Zoey 101," is pregnant. (Or the British tabloid OK!, which paid a reported $1 million to announce the fact, will be wanting its money back.) As to just when and with whom, rumors keep arising to buffet what were yesterday asserted as facts. It is a fluid story whose meaning keeps changing as new grist is poured into the gossips' mill.

The Caesarean delivery rate for U.S. women hit a record high in 2005 while teen births fell to a new low, government health officials said Tuesday. Close to a third of all babies born in the United States -- 30.2% in 2005, up from 29.1% in 2004 -- were delivered surgically in a procedure also commonly called a C-section, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics.

The mayor of Gloucester denied a Time magazine report that a group of girls entered a pact to become pregnant. "Any planned blood-oath bond to become pregnant, there is absolutely no evidence of," Carolyn Kirk said after meeting with school and health officials. At least 17 high school girls are expecting babies in the seaport 30 miles north of Boston. The 1,200-student high school has four times as many teenage girls expecting babies as it did last year. Kirk attributed the sharp rise in pregnancies to a lack of health education funding and the media's "glamorization of pregnancy."

The rate at which teenage girls in the United States are having babies has risen for a second year in a row, government statistics show, putting one of the nation's most successful social and public health campaigns in jeopardy. Nationally, the birth rate among 15- to 19-year-olds rose 1.4% from 2006 to 2007, continuing a climb that began a year earlier. The rate jumped 3.4% in 2006, reversing what had been a 14-year decline. The reasons for the increase remain unclear, although experts speculated that it could be due to growing complacency about AIDS and teen pregnancy, among other factors.

New information out just now explaining why Caroline Kennedy isn't Sen. Caroline Kennedy. Ticket readers will recall that back in January, when Hillary Rodham Clinton's New York Senate seat became vacant with her becoming secretary of State, the daughter of assassinated President John F. Kennedy expressed an interest in receiving the seat appointment from the state's governor, David Paterson. This would have continued a historical family position in the Senate. Caroline's father held a seat from Massachusetts, as does her terminally ailing uncle, Edward now. Another uncle, Robert, once held a New York Senate seat after serving as his brother's attorney general.

Citing Santa Ana's high teenage pregnancy rate, some parents and others in Orange County's largest school district are questioning a proposed health curriculum that pushes abstinence and barely mentions birth control. The Santa Ana Unified School District Board of Trustees will meet tonight to consider adopting a health textbook that doesn't include information on contraception.

Tina Jacobson has a close relationship with her teenage daughter. Shireen Miles and her daughter are close too. Jacobson believes her teen, Karissa, would come to her for help if she became pregnant. Same goes for Miles. But that's where the common ground ends for these two California mothers, who stand on opposing sides of what may be the most emotional -- and littlenoticed -- measure on the state's Nov. 8 special election ballot.